Chantal Downgraded As System Dissipates

The Second Front Page

August 17, 2001|By Ken Kaye, Florida Correspondent

To their surprise, hurricane experts discovered an impostor Thursday: What they thought was Tropical Storm Chantal turned out to be a vigorous tropical wave hiding under the vagaries of satellite imagery.

It took an Air Force reconnaissance plane to determine the system possessed no closed center of circulation, one of the requirements for a tropical system to be designated a depression or a storm.

Now officials say the wave, which they feared would become a Category 2 hurricane, is expected to gradually dissipate as it steams west at a brisk 29 mph.

Because the system briefly had sustained winds of 40 mph, it still will go down in the books as Tropical Storm Chantal, said meteorologist Martin Nelson of the National Hurricane Center in Miami-Dade County.

The news allowed the Windward Islands, particularly Barbados, St. Lucia, Dominica and the Grenadines, to breathe a sigh of relief as they had been bracing for a hurricane.